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The future of C-Bus2

Had an interesting discussion yesterday with some of the UK Schneider/C-Bus management team at the Homebuilding and Renovating show at the NEC.

My concern, probably shared by other C-Bus users, was that Schneider pulled out of the US market a few years ago, and now it has gone deathly quiet in the UK, no advertising, no new products, just some price rises that looked a bit steep. So it looked like Schneider might be getting ready to pull the plug on UK C-Bus.

That is apparently not the case at all, there is an exciting new C-Bus product on its way, and they are looking to open up to allow better integration with other technologies. I'll leave it for C-Bus to announce this in their own low-key way when the time is right! But it was interesting that one of the demos they had on the stand was one of their eDLT switches controlling Philips Hue.

We discussed the recent price rises in some detail, particularly the eDLT switch, which is probably C-Bus' most desirable product. Their feeling was that £350 for an eDLT was actually still pretty cheap for that product, when competitors high-end switches are over twice that price. This is an interesting perspective, so I rummaged round the NEC looking at competitors' products, from Lutron, Loxone, Control4 etc., and have to say I didn't see anything that looked as good or performed anywhere near as well as an eDLT. Some of the competitor's wall switches were £900, but looked a bit like a cheap mobile phone.

We also talked about the quality of their products, which I found fascinating. The Wembley stadium C-Bus2 install was done 12 years ago, 1,500 units, and in that 12 years, just 2 have failed, that is remarkable. In my much narrower experience, using C-Bus for around 10 years, I've never seen a component failure, never had a press of a switch get ignored, it has just worked perfectly. There was a couple on the stand whilst I was there who had used C-Bus2 in their home for around 12 years without a single failure, and they were specifying it for their new home. You have to wonder why C-Bus keep all this a secret?

Overall, it was an interesting afternoon, which confirmed my view that C-Bus is a really good choice for mid- to high-end lighting, blinds, and (some) other control. For someone that wants a faultlessly high quality smart home, that looks like a very attractive place to live, not a technology warehouse, then the perfect combination seems to be C-Bus2, SONOS, Honeywell EvoHome, Alexa, plus some back-end integration to draw it all together, and other devices such as smart TVs, cameras and TVs, where there seems to be a decent choice of OK products out there.

That back end technology is critical to make it all work seamlessly, and Alexa + 'something' seems to be the hot favourite to do that. In my case the back end is HomeSeer with iPad touchscreens, but HomeSeer comes with a steep learning curve that is probably a bit too much work for most people.

Has anyone heard any updates on this? I’ve not been able to find Any switches remotely as attractive and functional as the edlt’s. I don’t have cbus but am wanting similar style to control a range of things music and lighting mainly through intergration with indigo